


Just One Man

by musesmistress



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 06:42:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesmistress/pseuds/musesmistress





	Just One Man

John smiled. It was all he could do really, because he didn't understand a word of what the jabbering woman was saying; he just had to follow her through the city to the chief or councillor or whatever their leader was called.

One little comment, that was all it had taken, one silly little comment that he'd said to Elizabeth and now he was here, on Babble World – as he had mentally dubbed it – trying to work out what he was being told and what he had to do in order to get these people to allow them access to the ancient city.

Lorne had been the initial explorer, here to look around, open a dialogue and whatnot. The presence of the ancient city had sparked his interest and he'd done his best to start a negotiation with a people he couldn't understand. From what John had gathered so far, they had accepted manpower in exchange for the chance to explore the dormant city. Man power they could do easily: a few scientists to improve conditions, a handful of marines and Athosians, and it would be a done deal. If only everything was that easy.

He turned into the large building behind his guide and quirked a brow at how ridiculously lavish it was in comparison to the rest of the village. Outside, the huts were made of stone and mortar, decorated with simple, plain-coloured materials and furniture. But this building had tapestries and paintings, patterned cloth hangings and banners and the stairwell was lined with embroidered cloth that was bunched up in places.

He was led up those stairs and into a room that returned to the simple decoration, aside from the grand table that stretched across one end of the room. A stout woman stood on the other side of it, watching them come and John took in the grin that spread across her pudgy face. A feeling of dread shivered up John’s spine and he became acutely aware of the two women at the door behind him, the two at the door opposite and the random six or so that stood in their places around the room.

He was alone here. Rodney, Radek, and their band of merry geeks were waiting at the city for word that they could enter. Lorne and his marines were their guards, only there to scout the perimeter and make sure no one got in their way. But that was a good hour walk from the city where John was. Vulnerability took on a whole new meaning as he stopped a few paces from the table. His guide gave a respectful bow and scurried from the room as if she were afraid she’d be eaten alive and the echo of the doors closing behind her made John stiffen his posture.

He swallowed hard as the woman took him in from head to toe, taking in every inch of him. This was not looking good. She indicated to herself with a hand on her chest.

“Karia.”

John assumed this was her name and smiled as politely as he could back. “John,” he said, wondering if he could overpower the muscled women behind him. He glanced to the side, several the women standing along the side of the room were eyeing him hungrily and John had the sinking feeling he’d been traded for access to the city instead of manpower. His brain flickered back to Elizabeth’s teasing grin a few hours earlier when she’d told him what Lorne had said about the world.

“You should enjoy it there, Colonel. Major Lorne tells me they had an abundance of women in all shapes and sizes.”

“Oh crap,” he whispered under his breath. He hadn’t seen a single man here since they arrived. The woman spoke with a questioning tone, but John just smiled. He was going to be in trouble any minute now and he’d have to find a way to let Lorne know before they took away his weapons and radio.

~

The dialling gate was enough of a surprise for Elizabeth. She got up from her chair and made her way across the bridge to the control room; she expected it would be one of the teams back a few hours earlier than planned. The last thing she expected was Major Lorne and the whole of the science team coming home only two hours after they'd left. She watched each man step through as Lorne made his way up the stairs towards her. Knowing John Sheppard, he'd be through that gate last.

"Ma'am, we have a problem."

Elizabeth drew her eyes away from the gate just as the last man stepped back into the city. She fixed her eyes on the major, aware that the last person home was not John Sheppard, but Sergeant Gately. The look on the marine's face told her something had gone wrong in the city, where John would be. She turned away from the control room, walking calmly and slowly through it and over to the conference room. She said nothing, waiting for him to tell her without needing prompting.

"About an hour after Colonel Sheppard left for the city, I got a radio transmission from him." Elizabeth crossed her arms, leaning back against the table. Lorne cleared his throat. "It said, 'you sold me as a sperm donor, get everyone home now.' I caught someone else talking before the line cut off. I couldn't raise him again after that."

"A sperm donor?" she asked. Lorne nodded.

Her first instinct told her it was a joke, that John was playing a trick on them; she mentally counted the days to April first and realised with a sinking stomach that it had been three weeks earlier on Earth. With that came the realisation that John just wouldn't do this on a mission. A touch of raw panic took a sharp hold of her heart and she had to swallow hard against the desire to rush over to the planet to get him back. But she wasn't the wisest person to send. Far from it, in fact.

“There were no men,” she said, more to herself than to Major Lorne.

“Excuse me?” he asked, causing her to look up at him.

“Byron and Gately said there were mostly women on the planet. Did you actually see any men?”

Lorne thought about it for several minutes before he shook his head. “No, ma’am, I don’t remember seeing any men at all. We were focused on the women staring at us.”

“Gawking,” Elizabeth said. Lorne thinned his lips; she knew he hadn’t wanted to use that word. “If I were the leader of a world with a limited number of men, I would have to keep them safe, keep them away from the public eye.”

“Else they get raped and abused,” Lorne put in.

“Yes, but at the same time I would be desperate to increase the population, to rebuild the male side of it.”

“So you’d have them under scrutiny of doctors to keep them healthy and fit, to keep their sperm count high so they could harvest it to impregnate women.”

“Who would have to be monitored just as much to make sure we weren’t wasting the chance to create a child.”

“So he’ll be in a breeding facility.”

“Do you think you would know which one that is?”

“If it were you in charge, not a chance and I would put my money on you changing which building every so often.” She gave him a look that betrayed how well her staff knew her and turned to walk around the edge of the room.

“That means I’ll have to go and negotiate for his return.”

“You can’t go alone.”

“No,” she said, cutting him off before he could offer to get a team ready. “I need you go put together an all female security team for me.”

“All female?”

She quirked a brow. “If I take men with me, Major. What are my chances of returning to Atlantis with everyone?”

Lorne nodded. “I feel sorry for the colonel now.”

“I’ll have to punish him if he takes offence to being rescued by women,” Elizabeth said teasingly.

“Just one thing that’s been bugging me,” Lorne said, stopping her from leaving. “Why didn’t they kidnap me or anyone else? I’ve been back there twice.”

“Better prospects in keeping a deal than taking without merit.”

~

Elizabeth watched the city inhabitants as they turned to look at the approaching craft. From her viewpoint at the front of the puddle jumper, they looked amazed that any such machine could exist. It made her think of how people first saw airplanes, how many people were shocked at the sight and the fear of those who daringly got on board.

“That must be the main building,” Teyla said. She was standing between Elizabeth’s and their pilot’s chairs. Captain Larraine Phelps was the only member of the team to possess the Ancient gene and had suggested they use of a Puddle Jumper to save them the hour's walk, and had pointed out that in need of a quick getaway the Jumper would be to their advantage. She had suggested that they arrive cloaked and land just outside the city walls, but Elizabeth had disagreed. Showing these people what they were capable of would work in their favour.

“I hope these people are smart enough to move when we land,” Captain Phelps said as she slowed down and manoeuvred the Jumper to a position in the main square that wouldn’t crush any of the small market stalls and things dotted about. Elizabeth hadn’t considered that the space would be small or filled with people when she’d told her to fly in, but she had been lucky and the large space quickly emptied as the Jumper started to lower to the ground. “Good, good,” she said, more to herself than to anyone else.

As soon as they were on the ground, people gathered around them. Elizabeth caught sight of several women reaching out to touch the Jumper as she turned to the rest of the team. Captain Phelps powered down the Jumper and turned to follow her and Teyla into the rear compartment.

“Sergeants Harrow and Milestone, you’re on Puddle Jumper duty. The rest of you are with us.”

There was a duo of “Yes, ma’am,” from the two assigned to guard duty before the hatched lowered and Elizabeth led the other five and Teyla out into the sunlight. She paused at the bottom of the ramp to pull her tablet PC from its case and looked around at the gathered astonished faces, all of them women.

“Ready, ma’am?” Phelps asked.

“Yes, the sooner we start, the quicker we can get this over with.” And the quicker she could have John back to safety. She knew this world had a different language and she’d brought her computer to make notes so she could attempt to learn the language quickly. Elizabeth turned with Captain Phelps towards the main building and paused as the crowd parted to make way for a short plump woman who ambled towards them. When she stopped in front of Elizabeth, she gave a bright grin that Elizabeth saw right through.

_“Mooi, eindelijk de rest van de beloofde mannen?”_

Elizabeth frowned. It was unusual to hear a language based on something other than Latin or Greek in the Pegasus galaxy; it was rare enough to find one that didn’t speak some form of English. As she struggled for a moment to pick up on the language’s base location, the woman stepped forward and took a look into the Jumper. She turned back with a frown.

_“Waar zijn de mannen? Waarom wordt de overeenkomst niet nageleefd? We hebben een afspraak?”_

“That language sounds familiar,” Harrow said, standing only a few steps inside the Jumper.

“Yes it does,” Elizabeth said. But she still hadn’t picked up what it was similar to.

The plump woman stood looking between the women around her, for a moment seemingly as vexed with the lack of communication as Elizabeth felt. After a moment she waved off the problem, pasted the smile back on her face and adopted an airy tone of voice.

 _“Misschien moeten we verder praten over de details.”_ she started, then walked off the Jumper ramp and back towards the building, pausing to check that Elizabeth was following. Elizabeth started walking, aware that everyone in the crowd watched them move and Captain Phelps moved quickly to stay close to her side.

“It’s similar to Dutch,” Elizabeth said, knowing that at the very least Phelps would hear the comment.

“Do you speak this language?” Teyla asked.

“Enough to say ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’ and ‘how are you’, but our host hasn’t said anything like that.”

“Good thing we were ready for a language lesson,” Walker said, stepping into Elizabeth’s peripheral vision on the other side from Phelps.

“Yep,” Elizabeth said. “And it’s a good thing I brought a few dictionaries with me.” She grinned as she stepped through the open door; she’d never been happier to have a collection of English-to-other-language dictionaries from their own planet.

~

The first day of the trip had been frustrating; attempting to learn the dialogue and the differences between the languages had given Elizabeth a headache. At night, she and her team moved the Jumper to a beach on the other side of the planet’s land continent. Phelps had been wary of the idea, but had admitted she was more relaxed with that idea than having to spend the night in a room provided by the inhabitants of the planet. Elizabeth had quickly pointed out that the Stargate was now between them and their new ‘friends’, giving no one complete control.

After a week of little progress, Elizabeth began to find it hard to sleep. She was confident Rodney and Lorne were working well together with Carson as their mediator for any conflicts, and Ronon prevented any fights from breaking out. But as time went on, she became more and more convinced that someone on this planet was getting to see more of Colonel John Sheppard than should be allowed.

A day or so into their second week, Elizabeth took the team back to Atlantis so she could catch up and she spent an agonising two days without sleep and wishing she hadn’t left the negotiations for a break. At night, she spent her insomniac’s time learning Dutch so she could return with at least a base knowledge of the language, and in the early hours of the morning, the day they were heading back, she learned to ask to see John Sheppard.

Her head held high, Elizabeth stepped into the council room and stopped in front of Karia and demanded to see him before any more talks could take place.

Karia, having realised there was a slight barrier in the languages, took a moment to confirm what had been asked before she sat heavily down in a chair.

“Why?” Karia asked. She took a moment to compose her answer, while pretending she was looking up a few words and grammar points before she started to put her response together. By this point in their talks, they had determined that a miscommunication had taken place. A trade had been made and that was that. Elizabeth had offered everything from medical care to IVF treatments and a healthy amount of sperm from a bank back home. But Kaira had refused to budge. One healthy man was much better than a limited supply of sperm.

“I need to know he’s been treated well, that he’s still alive.” She bit her tongue, trying hard not to think or say that she needed to tell him she was sorry.

“I will consider it,” Kaira said and pushed herself to her feet. “Wait here.” She left, followed closely by the guards she’d had scattered around the room, and Elizabeth waited. For several long minutes she didn’t even relax or move from the chair, until Teyla offered her a bottle of water and pre-packed sandwich.

~

It was almost three hours later that the door opened and a woman appeared with an overly bright and bubbly smile. She reminded Elizabeth of a girl she’d known in high school, always cheery, always smiling and above all, always seeing the bright side of everything, including the worst things.

She introduced herself as Mayle and asked them to follow her. Elizabeth had only quirked a brow before following Mayle from the room through the same door Kaira had used hours earlier. They travelled down long corridors and stairs decorated with fabric hanging from ceiling to floor and dotted with paintings of elaborate parties and women in glorious dresses. Elizabeth found herself hating all of them until she spotted one that showed a woman holding tight to a young boy and she realised that this was the life these women led – desperate to keep their population, their village, alive.

Elizabeth began to map their path as they made their way along one long and winding corridor after another, and realised with a slight touch of shock that they’d left the main hall and probably passed under several other buildings and homes. Behind her she heard a couple of her team muttering and wondered if they had figured out the same thing, an underground maze with access to every building in the village.

When they finally turned up a set of stairs, Elizabeth suddenly felt nervous. The feeling didn’t abate when the door was opened and the first thing that met her was the sound of a baby crying. Her heart sank to her stomach as she realised this was John’s fate, children he would probably never see and all belonging to different women. And none of them belonging to her.

She tried hard to keep her composure as they passed through the infant ward of the building and into a very quiet and very masculine area. Mayle led them into a room and explained that only Elizabeth would be permitted beyond the main doors. Elizabeth caught the shift of Phelps’ stance and Teyla’s suddenly tense posture; as much as they had dealt with these people, there was still an underlining mistrust that wouldn’t leave any of them until this whole mess was straightened out.

Elizabeth only gave her team a look, albeit a look of a thousand words, before she turned and followed Mayle out of the room and through a large set of oak doors. The change in atmosphere was like a rush, the tense masculine hallway before the door was clearly faked in comparison to the area she was in now. While clinical in appearance, there was an all male scent, powerful and exhilarating all at the same time.

Mayle turned a corner and walked Elizabeth in front of a glass wall. On the other side, there were twenty or so men following the workout routine of a very muscular woman. Every one of the men wore the same skin tight pants and loose t-shirt that did nothing to hide their manhood and tight backsides. Elizabeth blushed at the thought of John wearing the same thing and then mentally slapped herself when she realised he just might be, she had to quickly prepared herself for just that eventuality.

Mayle turned another corner and pushed through another set of large oak doors; men lingered in the corridor beyond, wearing the same outfit and showing no amount of interest in the two women as they passed. Elizabeth caught whispers, picking up on words that told her they all knew where they were heading. When she glanced back, she realised a group of the men had started to follow them, their eyes taking in the woman in strange clothing and Elizabeth wondered how many times they got to see new flesh – so to speak.

At the end of the long hall, a woman stood by a door watching them come; as they approached, she unlocked the door and opened it from them. Elizabeth thought perhaps John had been locked in his room, but what met her on the other side was a very sterile and stale air. For the long week that she’d been in negotiations, John had been here, sitting in this empty shell of a section, waiting, wondering. Mayle stepped up to one of the doors on the left and checked the tag on the handle before opening the door and ushering her inside.

Still in his offworld uniform, John sat on the bed with his back to the door and his body tensed as she stepped into the room. The door behind her closed and she turned back and quirked a brow at how quickly and easily they’d been left alone.

“No more tests,” John said as Elizabeth took a step forward. “I’m not giving you any more samples.” She felt herself flush and closed her eyes against the image that statement brought about before she cleared her throat.

“John,” she said and had to clear her throat again as he turned to look at her. He got up quickly and she saw him wince in pain. “Are you okay?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Trying to get you...”

“You can’t be here, if you leave those guys alone, they’ll end up in here. Elizabeth, you have to leave.”

“Calm down, John,” she said, holding her hands up to stop him from overloading. “My protection detail is all women, Captain Phelps and Teyla are in charge and they’re waiting down the hall for me. I’ve already been here a week, trying to establish a dialogue with Kaira.”

John relaxed a little. “How many?” Elizabeth’s brow creased in confusion and she shook her head. “How many on your protection detail?”

“Six. Four with me, two with the Jumper.” John nodded and sank slowly back down on to the bed. “Are you alright, John?”

“Yeah,” he said a little too brightly. “I’ve been poked, prodded and sampled in any which way you can think of. These guys make Carson’s three hour post-mission exam look like a walk in the park.”

Elizabeth smiled despite everything. “Carson only does one hour post-mission checkups. You just usually end up in some situation that forces him to take three hours.”

John grinned at her. “True.” His smile faded and he sighed heavily. “They’ve taken enough samples to make about a half dozen babies by now.” He sighed again. “I don’t want kids this way, I don’t want to have kids out there that I don’t know or know about. I...” he trailed off.

“From what I understand,” she said, attempting a soothing tone of voice, “this is just the health and fitness test to make sure you can make good strong and healthy babies.” She hated how that sounded and had to shake it off before she could sit down next to him. “I’m working on getting you back. I won’t leave here until they let you go.” She reached out and took his hand, accidentally brushing her fingers over the top of his thigh. She ignored the touch and swallowed hard. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Thanks,” John said a second before the door opened and Mayle stepped in.

Elizabeth stood up and turned to face her. “I want more time.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you remain for any longer, they will be moving him into a room in the main hall shortly,” Mayle explained. Elizabeth stiffened her shoulders, she knew what that meant. She reached out a hand and gave John’s shoulder a squeeze of reassurance before stepping out of the room and following Mayle back to her team.

"I'll be back soon," Elizabeth promised.

~

A brief conversation passed between Mayle and Kaira before the negotiations continued, and it wasn’t only Elizabeth who noticed that the tone of their hosts had changed. Shortly after continuing, Teyla shifted beside her and asked quietly what had changed since their last meeting. Elizabeth shook her head. She knew what was different, but she didn’t want to say it here; there was a chance that someone in the room had picked up words in their language just as she was doing with theirs.

Previously, they had been making headway in the fact that a simple misunderstanding had happened in what they were exchanging when they'd first brokered the exchange between their peoples. Where Kaira had believed they were offering men for their population, Lorne had thought them offering muscles to help with security and crops. Now though, Kaira was telling them that she had made her demands clear to a man who didn’t understand her language and that John should have been the first of fifty men.

After several calm attempts to talk her back around, they broke for lunch and Elizabeth – refusing the refreshments from Kaira’s offering – walked her team back to the Jumper and asked Captain Phelps to fly them back to the beach. As they flew, Elizabeth withdrew into her mind, blocking out the small talk between the women around her. When they landed, she walked down the beach away from the Jumper and dropped down in the sand; she needed to think this through, work out how she could convince them to release John. She didn’t know how long she sat there, staring out at the ocean, but eventually the others came and sat down, forming a circle and setting up a picnic in the middle.

“IVF,” Phelps said.

“I’ve offered that already, IVF with medical care and sperm donations.”

“Won’t the men be happy about that?” Walker said with a grin. “Help your local Pegasus population – masturbate for a living.”

The other chuckled, but Elizabeth couldn’t. “I wonder what happened to the male population.”

“If there’s only one village here, wouldn’t it be reasonable for their gene pool to become limited?” Halls said. She’d been quiet until now, but the comment made Elizabeth look at her with interest. “They must have been in-breeding for a long time, perhaps they damaged the Y-chromosome and eventually just started producing more girls than boys until they ended up with such low numbers.”

“Since when did you become a biologist?”

“I’m not,” Halls said. “My uncle is. We need to convince them that they need medical help. That they can rebuild their male population with our help medically and control how many boys are born.”

“Is that possible?” Teyla asked.

“Yes,” Elizabeth answered. “They’ve tested that several times, in some countries it’s even allowed to choose what sex your child will be through IVF treatment, but most outlaw such control. That doesn’t stop that knowledge becoming a traded item, and if we can offer them good medical care for their pregnant women and children, as well as a healthy and continuous sperm bank, they might be able to re-grow their population, put men back in the streets and fix their in-bred DNA problem.” She ran a hand through her hair. “We need to go back to Atlantis before the talks resume. We’re picking up a passenger.”

~

It took about half an hour for Elizabeth to talk Doctor Nina Baumann into going back with them. Nina had only been in Atlantis for three months, Elizabeth knew she had spent the majority of her time working with Carson to catch up on what they had learned out here and now she was being asked to go to another world completely and teach a culture about expanding their gene pool.

Elizabeth knew that Nina's nervous posture would show when they stepped into the room and tried hard to teach her to appear confident on the Jumper trip back. When they walked into the hall, almost an hour late, Elizabeth didn’t let her posture fall or hide Nina in the group of women. She kept the doctor close at her side and introduced her straight off the bat.

Five long hours they sat, discussing diagrams and explanations for which Elizabeth spent a lot of time looking up the translations. When they talked about helping them build up their male population without compromising the female side, Kaira and Mayle started to pay serious attention.

During their one break, Elizabeth, using Teyla as a means, placed herself near to the two women as they discussed what they’d learned. She started with small pieces of conversation with Teyla before Halls joined them and she could focus on listening to the discussion going on nearby. The discussion made her want to scream, hearing the two women discussing John as if he were a piece of meat to be claimed and trying to figure out the best way to cook him. She could feel her blood start to boil when they turned their conversation to actually mating with him, and then began discussing how their children would look. It was when Kaira said he would make strong and healthy boys that Elizabeth snapped and she spoke without thinking.

“John isn’t capable of having healthy children,” she said, then bit her lip to stop herself. But it was too late and Kaira was glaring at her. Elizabeth straightened and composed herself before glancing at the women in her company. “Why do you think he is my mate?” she continued. She was already in this too deep and she was sure from the earlier tone of their conversation that they had watched her interact with John during her visit.

“I have been told John is healthy,” Kaira said, almost indigently.

“As the leader of my people, I can’t be seen as weak, and having a child would give me a weakness. John has been infected with a virus that altered his DNA structure. We’re not sure how it will pass on to his off-spring.” She looked Kaira in the eye before turning to look around the room. “He could make your situation worse.”

“There was no sign of this in his medical report.”

Elizabeth quirked a brow. “Your doctors would know how to detect a virus made by an advanced culture?”

Kaira bristled, then puffed out a breath in defeat. “Perhaps we can negotiate for your help after all.”

~

John knocked a second time on Elizabeth's door after waiting several minutes for an answer. He was impatient to talk to her and curious to know exactly what they’d told the Halian people. When he’d left the infirmary a few hours ago, he’d met with Captain Phelps. The woman had delighted in teasing him about bad DNA and having to make out with Kaira. It had annoyed him and he’d decided then he’d have to find out just what happened.

John had followed Mayle out of the medical area and back through the facility and met up with Elizabeth in the town square, but she had given him a warning look that had kept him quiet as he stepped back onto the Jumper. He remembered how happy he had been to hear the hum of the ship as it took off and how weird it was not to be in the pilot seat. No one had spoken all the way home and John had noticed that Elizabeth refused to meet his eye and spent the trip back fiddling with her fingers or the loose thread on her jacket.

The door opened and for a moment John caught the flicker of shock and fear that crossed Elizabeth’s face before she masked it with her usual diplomatic expression. This wasn’t the first time he’d sought her out after the working day was over, and still she kept that business manner in check. He was starting to hate it and at the same time make a game of trying to break through it and find the real her.

“What did you tell them?” he asked. Her brow creased in confusion for a moment before it seemed to sink in that he was talking about their recent mission.

She licked her lips. “Just a little white lie.” She turned away from the door and John followed her into the room.

“A lie? About me?”

“That planet is off limits to men for the next year or so; it doesn’t matter what I told them, because you won’t be going back.”

John’s brow quirked. For a moment she’d slipped out of her usual calm, business tone and into something else.

“What did you tell them about me?” He asked, now in a more teasing tone.

She stared at him, the hardened daring look that he returned in kind. “It doesn’t matter,” she tried, holding back a grin.

“Elizabeth, you lied on a diplomatic mission....”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” she joked. “Sometimes, it’s necessary to bend the truth, other times you need to lie through your teeth.”

“I was there for a week and a half, they ran more tests on me in that time than the military has run in my lifetime. You had to tell them something that made them sure I wouldn’t be useful.”

“So what if I did?” she let the grin out. “You didn’t want to be there, you didn’t want to be used like that. I told a lie to get you back here, where you are free, where you aren't forced into a daily exercise routine in stupid skin tight shorts and t-shirt.” The sentence trailed off as the mental image of him in that outfit came back.

John took several steps forward, closing the gap between them. “What,” he said, attempting to force a serious tone, “did you tell them?”

Not giving in, she took a step forward, her eyes fixed on his. “That you belonged to me and the retrovirus had contaminated your genes.”

John grabbed her hips without thinking and pulled her in for a kiss he hadn’t expected. It was a moment before he pulled back and another moment of looking at the mixed shock and pleasure in her eyes before he took a step away and released her.

“I should go,” he said honestly, but he didn’t move. He didn’t want to go. “I should go,” he said again. He finally worked out the momentum to move, but as he was about to turn away, Elizabeth stepped forward and kissed him.

He was taken by surprise by the kiss and didn’t respond until she was pulling away. He didn’t want her to move away, he hadn’t wanted to stop when he’d started kissing her in the first place, so he caught her before she changed her mind and kissed her again. She responded instantly, lips moving with his and hands coming up, first to his chest, then to the sides of his face. John placed his hands back on her hips for a moment before daring to slide them around to her back and down to her backside.

She hummed at the touch and John couldn’t help but pull her body against him as the kiss increased and the need built between them. He took a step forward, forcing her to take one back, closer to the bed he knew was only a few paces behind her. He expected her to stop him, to realise what they were about to do and over think the whole thing. But she surprised him by dropping her hands to his chest and then moving them to the zipper of his jacket.

He couldn’t believe this was happening. The comfortable air between them tightened as they slowly peeled away the layers of clothing. Hands roamed over skin, touching and caressing as they made love.

“I belong to you?” John said, trying to catch his breath.

“Yeah,” she said simply. “Do you have a problem with that?” She asked with a lilt in her voice that told him she was joking.

“Depends on what being owned means.”

“Hmmm,” she hummed, staring up the ceiling. “Do as I order, get me coffee on demand, be naked when I want you naked.” She paused for a moment. “Clean my room, scrub my back.” She started laughing. “Paint my toe nails.”

“Braid your hair?” he said, turning to her and starting to tickle her. She let out a scream before begging him to stop. He stopped only to wrap his arms around her. “I can do some of that, especially the naked bit.” Elizabeth laughed.


End file.
